8/29/14 E stalkers

(0829 E Stalkers)

970 WBLF.  I’m Wes Richards with some thoughts on Email Stalkers.

It started years ago.  An email from the “Wonder City Running Club.”  A long e-mail.  Coming events.  Reports of past events.  Pictures, endless pictures.

So not being much of a runner, and having decent knee-borne arthritis, I clicked on the “unsubscribe” button.

But the next day and the day after that, and practically every day after that, there was a letter from the folks at Wonder City, which is in a far away state.

So I wrote a “personal” email to them, asking them to please leave me alone.  

They replied that they had no record of my email address and if some “friend” was forwarding it, to please contact that friend.

I don’t have a lot of friendships with runners, football people, soccer people, baseball people, gymnasts,

marathon cyclists or, for that matter, gym rats of any kind.  And there was no evidence that anyone I knew was forwarding me all this nonsense.

Each day, I would dutifully unsubscribe.  And each day I would get the same return schpiel.  Even marking their stuff as spam didn’t help.

But as luck would have it, I found the name of a real person with a real email address.  Call her Kellie Fastfeet.

I wrote her the usual plea to get taken off the list, and then added:

“...so if you continue sending me these things each day or so, I am going to reply to every one of them with the news of the day.  For example, we had a lot of rain here last night, a couple of passing thundershowers, but nothing as bad as Seattle or Baltimore or Pittsburgh.

“And if I hear from you tomorrow I’m going to tell you all my secrets of getting good stuff at bargain prices at the Wal-mart produce department.”

About half an hour later, I get a note:  I found your email address in our data base and have taken you off the list.

I’m going to miss Ms. Fastfeet and all the latest from Wonder City and its runners.  But that’s the price one has to pay for being a counter stalker.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®